Author’s notes: This begins with a flashback to the climax of the events at the Berkshire School; this will be more from Abe’s point of view but will still be written in the third person. This flashback will go on to a conversation between Abe and Broom later in that same day.

You must, at least, read Part Eleven for this part to make sense.

Chapter Five: Abe Sapien: Sibling Rivalry: Part Twelve

Sunday, Late Morning, November 19, 1978

“Look at that, Abe, all that fuss over nothing,” Hellboy said as he cautiously crept, gun in hand, into the dorm room after he had busted the door down. Abe watched as Hellboy went and stood next to the five unconscious boys he was planning to rescue.

Abe, along with Trevor Broom, moved closer to the now empty doorway. He did not feel at all good about this. He could sense, even more clearly than before, an extremely powerful entity.

His heart leaped in his chest when he became aware that Hellboy, for no apparent reason, had just stopped dead in his tracks and dropped his huge gun to the floor. Abe shoved past Trevor Broom and, running into the room, grabbed Hellboy from behind.

With desperate strength he began to drag the practically unconscious Hellboy backward toward the doorway. Hellboy started to come to and struggled frantically against Abe who realized that Hellboy, for some odd reason, couldn’t really see what was going on despite the fact that the room was quite brightly lit.

He tried to speak to Hellboy, to reassure him that he was in the hands of a friend, but the words just wouldn’t come. Hellboy might not have been able to hear him anyway.

Abe tried to get into Hellboy’s mind—to broadcast a reassuring thought directly at him. But there was now a dark barrier that his thought could not penetrate; one that was not at all natural.

Hellboy made a dive to the floor, trying to break free from the one that had grabbed him, and the next thing Abe knew he was staring down the barrel of Hellboy’s enormous gun.

“Damn,” was the only thing that he could think to say as Hellboy fired at point-blank range.

Abe attempted to twist away from the shot without letting go of his hold of the frantic Hellboy, but the pain of that 22mm bullet slamming into his right shoulder was just too much for him.

Hellboy, for a brief second, appeared to stare in shocked surprise at the sight of all that dark blue blood that poured out from Abe’s wound.

Abe collapsed to his knees and watched helplessly as Hellboy fell to the floor in a dead faint. He became aware that an odd impenetrable shadow had sprang up between them and the doorway and that Trevor Broom was frantically trying to force himself into the room.

Unexpectedly, a huge, dark, powerful voice boomed out.

“Human, you have kept me from my son for long enough. I have returned for him.”

“Told you so, you big monkey,” Abe muttered as he blacked out from the pain and blood loss.

Later that same day

When he came to, he found himself in the back of an ambulance with his right shoulder all bandaged up. He was groggy from some pain reliever that must have been administered while he was still unconscious. Trevor Broom clambered up into the back of the ambulance. His right eye was black and he had stitches and bandages all along the right side of his face. He went over to a bench next to the cot that Abe was lying on and sat down. His eyes were filled with tears.

After a deep breath he said, “Abe, I am so sorry. I should never have brought you here. This entity that has possessed him is taking advantage of an underlying resentment Hellboy has toward my bringing you on this trip. My poor boy is totally out of his mind and some sort of internal conflict is being exploited by this fiend that is claiming to be his real father.”

Abe struggled to sit up. “Don’t blame yourself, Professor. There wasn’t any way that you could have predicted something like this. It’s a good thing the big monkey has such poor aim with that gun even at that close a range.” Even though Abe’s speech was still somewhat hesitant, little by little speaking was become second nature to one who had been mute for over a century.

Broom wearily dropped his head into his hands; he could still hear Hellboy shouting venomous words of hatred at him; he could still see that huge right hand being driven at him in a punch that would have killed him instantly if it had directly connected with his head.

Hellboy had never before hit Broom with that hand—or even threatened to hit him with it; not even unintentionally when he had been very young and had little control over it. The very worst part of this memory for Broom wasn’t the pain of the blow so much as it had been watching Hellboy’s own horror at what he was doing; to watch him struggling to take back control of that hand; to see him grab onto his own right arm with his left hand in an attempt to deflect the blow.

Hellboy’s own valiant struggle against himself, and against this hideous entity that had possessed him, drove him into a weird state of seizure. At the very moment when his fist grazed the right side of Broom’s head, Hellboy crumpled unconscious to the ground at his father’s feet.

Trevor Broom stood up, shaking his head to dislodge these terrible memories, “I am so sorry that I cannot stay with you at this time of trouble, but my son needs me; I must go to him. I also have what seems like a hundred paramedics, doctors, and school officials to debrief. The best thing about this whole fiasco is that the five boys have survived this incident with nothing more than bad headaches. They do not really recall anything. School officials have informed them that they were overcome by fumes from a faulty radiator; the fifth boy also believes that he was overcome by fumes when he attempted to rescue his friend.”

Broom reached down and squeezed Abe’s good shoulder. “Thank you for trying to save my son. Thank God, I have found that we are close to a small municipal airport in Pittsfield, Massachusetts that can handle small jets. You are going to be flown to Newark; the Bureau facilities there are the most adequately equipped for your care. Hellboy and I will be flying to Boston. Father Ed Kelly is stationed at the BPRD facility there and I believe that we will be as much in need of his expertise as an exorcist as in medical care for Hellboy. Good luck, Abe.”

With that Trevor Broom departed and Abe wondered how bad things really were with Hellboy.